Operation Year of Freedom

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Only 762 turns on the beautiful and mountainous route from Pai to Mae Hong Son... thank goodness for my talking book (The Beekeeper of Alepo 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟) and Travel Kalm - thanks, Heather ❤️
A small but interesting Living Museum with photo documentary of the Shan people and many local artifacts. The waterproof covering for when you're planting rice really appealed to us both !
Hilltribe tourism has been a prominent feature of northern Thailand's tourist offerings. After much reading and chatting to some fellow travelers, we'd not felt the pull to experience what was on offer near Pai and Chiang Mai.
But 19 km from Mae Hong Son, and then a short long boat ride to Huay Pu Keng there is a Kayan Longneck tribe village with approximately 220 people (around 60 families) mostly refugees from Myanmar living there.
Yes, there were some of the usual hallmarks of tourism but these were surprisingly minimal.
Approximately a dozen stalls doted the main path through the village, with a very soft sell of their small range of offerings.
Several of the women we bought things from told us about the tradition of wearing rings around their necks and knees.
Starting at 7 years old, their neck bands started at .5 kg with the heaviest we heard of weighing 7kg and worn by one of the woman's grandmother still - she'd stopped at 5kg!
The 220 baht each we paid to get across the river is shared with the whole tribe, who having been running a non-profit model that puts their community first after Covid.Les mer